Friday, October 10, 2014

The Lady Who Collected Dracula

Vance wrote in reminding me to post more Frank Robbins, so I dug around the crypt a little and unearthed this awesome bloodsucker classic written by Doug Moench --plus an art assist from Frank Springer. Robbins really amps up the sexy and sinister in this one, --so hang onto your fangs and BATten down the hatches!

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Since we're counting down to Halloween maybe I can share some of the many paranormal incidents that have happened in my family, both immediate and extended. It's not enough to make a movie about it, but there are a lot of brief anecdotes. I'll call this one...

The Evil Child

This happened to a female cousin of mine. She was married and had a little baby boy. He slept in a crib in the bedroom right in front of her's. At night she would keep both doors open and from her bed she could see all the way into the baby's room and see him in his crib. One night she woke up with a start. Her husband was still asleep. Apparently there had been no noise. That's when she realized that a straight, coherent beam of light was illuminating a spot right next to the baby's crib. In that spot she could see what looked like a child with his face turned away. He was wearing a striped shirt and a red cap. As if he could feel my cousin's stare he suddenly turned his face. According to my cousin he had the most evil expression she had ever seen. She became immediately convinced that he was coming for the baby. As you can imagine she became hysterical, screaming the house down and waking up her poor, startled husband. They jumped out of bed, turned on the lights and there was nobody there. The baby was fine. Did she dream the whole thing?

Flash forward a few years. The boy is now six years old. My cousin was in the habit of going to a municipal athletic complex in the town she lives in and walk a number of times around the track as exercise. She had left the kid in a particular spot to wait for her. When she was finishing her walk she saw that the boy was walking toward her looking up and to the side toward the top of some trees. He had a big old grin on his face. At this moment the following exchange happened between my cousin and her son:

Robbins really shines in this one -- as a lot of people have said, Robbins can run hot and cold but here he's red hot. It's because the story calls for many shots of lanky people in strange poses, his more exaggerated style works great.

I love the longer faced, open-jawed Dracula here. Gene Colan will forever be the most important Marvel Dracula artist, but Robbins comes in a close second here.

The story? Rizzoli seems to be a bit of an idiot. He's prepared for Dracula but not for anybody else? Obviously he'd have to know Dracula would get the woman, and if she shows up, than it's obvious why. Wear a cross, man!

One thing I love about this story, and it's very much Marvel's Dracula in a nutshell, how he just uses the woman as a tool, not knowing she's going to die or not, just not caring. His revenge is all that's important.

There's a great issue of ToD where electricity or something brings back a corpse that takes revenge on somebody Dracula needed, and the corpse is not something he can kill, so the story ends with him howling his denied vengeance. It's a great character study.

ToD 46 "Let us be wed in unholy matrimony".the beginning of a great story arc where Vlad will have to learn many things: that vengeance is vain, how to really love a woman, feel mercy for a mother and her child, and finally will "see the sun again", painfully stripped of his vampiric nature and his pride. Powerful stuff! Those were the days...

As I said before, I've never been lucky enough to have an issue of DRACULA LIVES, but when it comes to BW horror magazines, the year 1974 does automatically mean something to me, and that's the Warren magazines. And even more than some by other publishers, this story makes me think of those. Especially the "cheesecake" type picture at the bottom of Page 6.

I liked Mestiere's story, eerie as it was. Perhaps with Karswell's permission, on one day in October followers of THOIA could recount any mysterious event, happening, etc. they experienced, sort of like telling campfire tales over the internet to add chills to our bones on the dark nights before October 31st, All Hallows Eve. Unfortunately I have no such experiences to relate but I am interested in any that a THOIA follower might have had.

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